Mmmmm! Shrimp!
The fortunes of businesses that catch, process, distribute and serve shrimp in restaurants are tied to the health of the oceans and the life within them. The massive BP oil spill of 2010 closed much of the nation's shrimp fishing industry for months, hurting Gulf Coast businesses and creating opportunities for shrimp suppliers in other regions. If you want to invest in the ups and downs of the shrimp industry, there are financial tools on the Internet that can help.
Instructions
1. Visit the Google Finance website at google.com/finance. If you prefer, you can use other financial sites such as Yahoo! Finance or Bloomberg.com.
2. Search the site for "seafood" to retrieve information on the industry as a whole as well as profiles of several hundred individual companies.
3. Read the information in the "exchange" column. This tells how the company's stock is traded. For instance, companies with an NYSE listing are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Many companies in the seafood industry are not publicly traded.
4. Review company descriptions for mention of activities involving shrimp to see if the companies are of interest to you as an investment possibility. For instance, Global Seafood Technologies, Inc. (GSFD) is a processor and supplier of fresh and frozen shrimp. Shells Seafood Restaurants, Inc. (SHLLQ) includes shrimp on their menus and the Minh Phu Seafood Corp. (HCM) is a company based in Vietnam that processes and exports shrimp.
5. Ask your stock broker for more information about the industry and about individual companies that interest you as possible investment. Online brokerage firms sometimes have in-depth reports available online.
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